10 Palestinians injured in clashes with Israeli troops

3:14PM BST 31 Aug 2001

AT least 10 Palestinians were injured today as violent clashes erupted with Israeli forces in the southern Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Following the funeral procession of Doctor Musa Safi Kdemat, 50, in the West Bank city of Hebron, stonethrowers assaulted an Israeli outpost, which escalated into shooting. Israeli tanks returned fire, injuring one Palestinian.

The procession of around one thousand people marched the body, carried by police and fellow doctors, to his nearby village for burial.

Kdemat was shot in the stomach yesterday in the city centre as he rushed away from the battle between soldiers and Palestinian gunmen, Palestinian sources said.

Meanwhile in the divided flashpoint city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, nine Palestinians were injured, three of them seriously, during overnight clashes.

Security sources claimed the army destroyed nine houses and damaged 10 others. The army said it carried out the incursion to prevent any attempt to smuggle weapons into the divided flashpoint city.

Hours earlier, Israeli tanks fired on a Palestinian position in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Israeli settlement of Netzarim, and killed Force 17 member Sami Barud.

His death brought to 759, the number of people killed since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September, including 581 Palestinians and 156 Israelis.

Also in Rafah, Israeli tanks that had been positioned around the local hospital lifted their siege overnight, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.

The tanks had been stationed around the hospital since they moved in by one-half mile into autonomous Palestinian territory Wednesday overnight, destroying a Palestinian security position on the way.

The road leading to the divided city has been reopened and is still controlled by the Israeli army.

Yesterday evening, Israel launched a brief incursion into central Gaza near an entry point to Israeli territory and destroyed a Palestinian position with bulldozers, Israeli public radio reported, citing military sources.

Acting on a tip-off, members of a special police unit, backed by borderguards, wounded and captured one member of the cell in the Arab quarter of Beit Hanina, in occupied east Jerusalem.

Another was arrested following the interrogation of some 20 other Palestinians, rounded up at a Beit Hanina gambling house, where he had found refuge during a chase.

The same sources said two more members of the cell were arrested Friday morning.

In northern Israel, a bomb exploded near a restaurant at the Golani crossroads, northwest of the Sea of Galilee, causing no injuries and little damage.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, a crowd attacked a Palestinian police station following a symbolic funeral for Abu Ali Mustafa, head of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine who was assassinated on Monday.

Rumour spread that a group of Americans were visiting Bethlehem's police chief, Colonel Yusef Haideeb, and the crowd besieged the building. The attack was defended by local police and the meeting cancelled.

"The American group came to get a diagnosis of our reaction to the Beit Jala incursion and to share some coffee," Haideeb said.

"People began yelling outside that they did not want Americans around here because of America's political point of view," he added.